Players with misleading averages....

[Migara]

Debatable to be honest. He was pretty good and was just overshadowed by Shane Warne which Harbhajan would as well. I would say 31-32 would be fitting.

Played in ideal conditions both home and away. Never played in India, got hammered in SL, and was generally a failure in the SC or against SC teams. If he played a representative enough chunk of matches in SC against SC teams, that average would have jumped up lot more. In home games, he played a significant proportion of his matches in spin friendly wickets as the second spinner to Warne. My impression about him is that he was a tiger against batsmen who could not play spin, but was a ***** cat against who could do it.

 

[Phantom]

Love this thread

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet (i'm not searching through 26 pages), I suppose really the thread is about over inflated records but Mohammed Sami, I can't for the life of me figure out why statistically this guy doesn't succeed at test level, he's young, fit, has excellent pace, and swings the ball, bowls an excellent length, yet he averages 50, unreal.

 

[NUFAN]

Played in ideal conditions both home and away. Never played in India, got hammered in SL, and was generally a failure in the SC or against SC teams. If he played a representative enough chunk of matches in SC against SC teams, that average would have jumped up lot more. In home games, he played a significant proportion of his matches in spin friendly wickets as the second spinner to Warne. My impression about him is that he was a tiger against batsmen who could not play spin, but was a ***** cat against who could do it.

I think that you might have a point in some ways given the fact that we played at the SCG alot and he bowled so well there. But surely saying he'd average 37 is a bit rich.

 

[Cruxdude]

Debatable to be honest. He was pretty good and was just overshadowed by Shane Warne which Harbhajan would as well. I would say 31-32 would be fitting.

Do not rate Macgill much. Would not call him a better spinner than Harbhajan.

 

[Phantom]

Do not rate Macgill much. Would not call him a better spinner than Harbhajan.

Not entirely sure i'd call him worse though either

 

[abmk]

Played in ideal conditions both home and away. Never played in India, got hammered in SL, and was generally a failure in the SC or against SC teams. If he played a representative enough chunk of matches in SC against SC teams, that average would have jumped up lot more. In home games, he played a significant proportion of his matches in spin friendly wickets as the second spinner to Warne. My impression about him is that he was a tiger against batsmen who could not play spin, but was a ***** cat against who could do it.

took 15 wickets in 3 tests vs Pak in Pak @ 27.5. Hardly a failure by any means.

here are their stats when they played together .

Bowling records | Test matches | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPN Cricinfo

Bowling records | Test matches | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPN Cricinfo

They played on the same pitches, didn't they ?

 

[Phantom]

I don't want to downplay MacGill's career, as I love him as a cricketer and reckon he was stiff to be in the same era as Warne and certainly not the worst leggie out there, but i've always been perplexed by those stats when they played together and it could be argued I suppose that MacGill fed off Warne's stifling success from the other end, much like Warne did with McGrath.

 

[vcs]

I will be forever thankful to MacGill for bowling a steady stream of pies to Laxman in Adelaide 2003 when we were struggling a bit with 4 wickets down and 60 odd runs still to go.

 

[Xuhaib]

Glenn Turner? Never played the Windies after 72 and there is a few interesting stories about how Glenn "tackled" genuine pace on the county circuit. Simon Wilde in the excellent Letting Rip suggests both Turner and Zaheer Abbas were guys who got the statistical rub of the green.

Both Imran and Holding believe Zaheer test record does not do justice to his talents he scored some big hundreds on the county circut facing the likes of Imran,Proctor,Hadlee,Garner,Roberts and Holding.

 

[Migara]

took 15 wickets in 3 tests vs Pak in Pak @ 27.5. Hardly a failure by any means.

here are their stats when they played together .

Bowling records | Test matches | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPN Cricinfo

Bowling records | Test matches | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPN Cricinfo

They played on the same pitches, didn't they ?

So sub-continent is Pakistan only? So what did he do against SL and IND?

 

[abmk]

So sub-continent is Pakistan only? So what did he do against SL and IND?

just pointing out that he was not as big a failure against SC teams as you made him out to be ...

not sure whether I'd call him worse than harbhajan either ... harbhajan himself has been rather mediocre vs SL and Pak ( apart from probably a 5-fer in one test in SL )

averages 52 vs Pak and 39 vs SL ...